Seven hours and twenty-five minutes.

That is how long it took the Australian Parliament to terminate the Russian Federation’s lease on a block of land near Parliament House in June 2023. The House passed the bill in four and a half minutes. The Senate in three. By 4:26 pm that same day, it was law.

I mention this not because I object to national security measures. I mention it because this single event proves, beyond any doubt, that the political system can move at extraordinary speed when it decides something matters.

But here is what else it proves: the system does not only move when it is threatened. It also moves when there is something to gain.

The speed of opportunity

Let me be precise about what the system can do when it is properly motivated.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, governments imposed sweeping controls on movement, work, and social life without prior parliamentary approval. Borders closed. Businesses shut. Communities were confined. The executive acted. Parliament rubber-stamped the decisions later. You could call that a response to crisis. Fair enough.

But consider what happened in 2025.

Parliament was recalled within 48 hours to pass hate speech laws in response to the Bondi terror attack. A tragedy occurred. Public fear was high. The mood was raw. And into that window, the government rushed laws that had been sitting in draft form for months—laws that criminalised speech, expanded police powers, and gave the state new tools to silence dissent. All under the cover of “safety.”

This was not a response to a threat to the powerful. The powerful were not at risk. This was an opportunity—a chance to expand state power, to criminalise political opponents, to emerge from a tragedy with more control than before. And Parliament moved at the speed of light to seize it.

Electoral laws—the most significant changes to how democracy functions in 40 years—were rushed through both Houses in a single day after a late-night deal between the major parties. The Senate was expected to debate the bill without even seeing the amendments. Again, an opportunity: both parties saw a chance to lock in the two-party system and shut out independents. They took it.

The message is unmistakable: When the powerful see an opening—a crisis to exploit, a tragedy to weaponise, a deal to strike—the political system moves at the speed of light.

The pace of protection for ordinary people

Now contrast this with the timeline for protecting ordinary Australians from being systematically overcharged by supermarkets—a harm that affects every single person in this country, every single week.

Legislation that would give regulators stronger powers to crack down on corporations that harm consumers passed the House of Representatives before the federal election in May 2025. It had to be reintroduced in August 2025 to “finish the job.” Consumer advocates had been calling for these powers for years. Years.

The Scams Prevention Framework—legislation designed to protect Australians from the billions of dollars lost to fraud—was left to the final weeks of the parliamentary sitting. Consumer groups called for Australia to follow the United Kingdom’s model of mandatory compensation within days. Instead, the proposed framework means a complaint “may take up to two years to resolve.”

Two years. The fraudsters will have stolen billions more in that time.

And the issue that sits at the heart of the Woolworths case—the vague, judicially-unworkable definition of what constitutes a genuine “was/now” price in supermarket promotions? That has been sitting in the too-hard basket for years. No one has treated it as urgent. No one has recalled the House to fix it overnight.

Why the double standard exists

If you want to understand why the system can move overnight on some things but not on others, follow the opportunity.

The Russian lease? No organised opposition. No industry group had a financial stake in preserving it. No lobbyists made phone calls. No campaign donations were threatened. The opportunity to look tough on Russia? Priceless. Parliament moved.

The Bondi hate speech laws? The opportunity to expand state power while appearing to protect the public? Irresistible. Parliament moved.

Electoral reform? The opportunity for both major parties to entrench the two-party system and freeze out independents? A deal was struck before dawn. Parliament moved.

Now consider consumer protection.

The opportunity to help ordinary people at the expense of powerful corporations? That opportunity exists every single day. Every voter is a consumer. Every family buys groceries. Every person in this country has been overcharged at some point. A government could rush through a law defining “reasonable period” as 60 days. They could campaign on it. They could win votes on it.

They do not.

Not because the opportunity is absent. Because the wrong people would benefit.

The people who would gain from clear, enforceable consumer protection laws are ordinary Australians. And ordinary Australians do not make campaign donations. They do not offer lucrative post-politics jobs. They do not run media campaigns in support of friendly MPs.

The people who would lose from clear consumer protection laws are the supermarket duopoly—Woolworths and Coles—and the broader corporate sector. They do make donations. They do offer jobs. They do run campaigns.

So the opportunity sits untouched. Year after year. Parliament after Parliament.

What this means for the Woolworths case

Let me return to where this began.

Justice O’Bryan is currently wrestling with a question that Parliament should have answered years ago: What is a “reasonable period” for a “was” price?

The consumer watchdog says a few weeks is not enough. Woolworths says 19 days is fine. The judge is left to guess, because the law does not specify.

Parliament could fix this tomorrow. Literally tomorrow. If a Russian lease can be terminated in seven hours—if hate speech laws can be drafted and passed in 48 hours—a definition of “reasonable period” could be added to the Competition and Consumer Act by lunchtime.

But it will not happen. Not because it is technically difficult. Not because there is no agreement that consumers are being misled. But because the supermarket duopoly has no interest in a clear rule. Vague laws benefit the party with more lawyers.

And because protecting ordinary people from routine, predictable exploitation is not an opportunity that the political class wants to seize. No single overpayment for laundry powder or biscuits is worth a national news cycle. But millions of overpayments, aggregated over years, becomes a quiet transfer of wealth from people who need it to companies that do not.

That transfer is not a bug in the system. It is a feature. And the people who benefit from it are the same people who fund the political campaigns that keep the laws vague.

The real crisis

The Centre for Public Integrity released a report in early 2026 finding that “rushed, opaque or selective law-making processes risk poorer-quality laws, increase the likely influence of vested interests and further erode already fragile public trust in political institutions.”

They were talking about hate speech laws. But the observation applies more broadly.

The system can act with breathtaking speed when it wants to—when there is an opportunity to expand state power, to entrench the two-party system, to look tough on Russia. But when the opportunity is to help ordinary people at the expense of powerful corporations? Suddenly, everything slows down. Consultation is required. Stakeholders must be heard. Change cannot happen overnight.

The question Australians should be asking is not whether Parliament can pass consumer protection laws quickly.

It is why it consistently chooses not to.

The answer is uncomfortable. But it is not complicated.

The system does not serve the people who need it. It serves the people who can afford it. And the people who can afford it have no interest in clear, enforceable rules that would stop them from quietly transferring wealth from your pocket to theirs.

So the judge will keep wrestling with vague laws. Woolworths will keep winning. And you will keep overpaying.

Not because the system is broken.

Because the system is working exactly as it was designed to.

This is in repsonse to the following ABC article: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-04-30/tense-exchanges-federal-court-case-accc-woolworths/106561702